By PAM EASTON Associated Press Writer

HOUSTON (AP) - An expressionless Clara Harris said nothing as her husband pleaded for her to stop as she ran over him with her Mercedes-Benz after catching him with his lover, the woman's stepdaughter testified Wednesday.

"She stepped on the accelerator and went straight for him," 17-year-old Lindsey Harris recalled for jurors in her stepmother's murder trial. "He was really scared. He was trying to get away and he couldn't."

Clara Harris, 44, is accused of intentionally running over her husband David Harris in a hotel parking lot July 24.

She has claimed her husband's death was an accident. Defense attorney George Parnham has said she only wanted to save her marriage and family.

Prosecutors say the defendant became enraged when her husband chose a woman he was having an affair with over her after a confrontation at the same hotel where David and Clara Harris were married on Valentine's Day a decade earlier.

Lindsey Harris, who was a passenger in the luxury sedan, testified her father was struck once and then her stepmother circled around and hit him two more times, never once trying to avoid him.

She said she screamed and tried to get out, but couldn't because the car was moving so fast.

When the car finally stopped, Lindsey Harris said she jumped out and hit her stepmother.

"I knew she had killed my dad," she testified as Clara Harris sat with her hands covering her face.

"She said, 'I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. It was an accident.' She knew what she did and she wasn't sorry."

Lindsey Harris also told jurors that her stepmother had told her just before her father's death that "she could kill my father for what he's done and get away with it."

Under cross examination by Parnham, Lindsey Harris told jurors she has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her stepmother.

The teen testified that days before her father's death, he had confessed to Clara Harris about his affair with Gail Bridges, one of his office workers.

Lindsey Harris, who had suspected the affair, said she was upset with her father. She said her father and stepmother had grown apart after the birth of their twin boys three years earlier.

The teen told jurors she partially blamed the affair on her stepmother's lack of attention to her father.

When Clara Harris heard that, she began weeping and jurors were taken from the courtroom for a second day in a row. State District Judge Carol Davies told Clara Harris she would remove her from the courtroom if she couldn't control her emotions.

Lindsey Harris, who was composed throughout her testimony said she told her father he should not leave her stepmother for Bridges, whom she described as fake and "the personification of evil."

The relationship between her father and stepmother seemed to improve after Clara Harris fired Bridges and she thought everything was going to be all right, Lindsey Harris said.

She said Clara Harris later learned her husband was still sneaking off to meet Bridges, which prompted her and her stepmother to search for him on July 24.

In earlier testimony Wednesday, the victim's father, Gerald Harris, said he still goes to church with his daughter-in-law and talked with his granddaughter on the telephone about once a week until the murder trial began Jan. 21. Prosecutors asked the grandparents to refrain from contacting Lindsey Harris because she was feeling "pressured."

Gerald Harris and his wife, Mildred, have said they want to keep their family together and still love and support Clara Harris.

While on the stand, Gerald Harris looked toward the accused, who smiled at him.

If convicted, Clara Harris faces up to life in prison. If jurors determine she acted under the legal definition of sudden passion, they could consider a lighter sentence of two to 20 years in prison.